by Steven James
Derek hung up, settled his bill, and as he took the elevator back toward his room he contemplated what to do.
Banks and Antioch. Yes, he remembered them from last fall. Now here they were, getting entangled in things once again.
RixoTray.
Plyotech Cybernetics.
First Emilio getting mixed in.
Now Banks and his friend, all wrapped up in this drone exchange.
Once again Derek found himself wondering who was behind everything. Was it Garcia after all? What about Akio Takahashi? That seemed unlikely.
But if not him, who?
Who knew about everything that was going on? Earlier Akio had informed him that Undersecretary of Defense Williamson mentioned that someone had confided in her about some undisclosed research.
But who? Who knew about that, and why would they report it?
Derek reached the sixty-seventh floor, left the elevator, and started down the hall.
The only other people who were informed about what was going on in sublevel 4 were the orderlies who worked there, and Calista. But he doubted they were involved and he couldn’t imagine that it was her.
The only one left was Dr. Malhotra.
Derek reached the room.
Yes.
Dr. Malhotra. He had the contacts, but what did he have to gain? More money for his research?
Possibly.
Derek unlocked the door.
The bloodied plastic sheet was there. The chair was there. But both Calista and the engineer were gone.
“Calista?”
No reply.
He searched the suite, the bathroom, the closets, under the beds.
No one.
Nothing.
Yes, Calista had acted out before. Yes, she’d been upset when she left the table, but he never would have suspected she would do something like this.
He phoned Dr. Malhotra.
“Yes, sir?”
“I need you to come to the Arête. There’s a small problem that needs to be taken care of.”
“Of course.”
“And my rifle. It’s in my office. Bring it along.”
Charlene left Fionna and her kids at the table with their chips and salsa appetizer and went to meet with Clive Fridell to pick up the things that had been found in Emilio’s locker.
She found him at the front desk waiting for her.
“Miss Antioch. Good to see you.”
“You too, Mr. Fridell.”
“Clive. Please.”
“Clive, then.” She glanced around but didn’t see any box of supplies or notebooks. “The items from Emilio’s locker?”
He gestured for her to join him down a hallway marked SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY. “Come right this way and I’ll get you all taken care of.”
The lights in the room must be attached to motion sensors, because a few minutes ago when Xavier and I began our search they flicked on automatically.
Now, I glance at my phone and see that we only have twelve more minutes before we need to return the security clearance card to Fred.
There has to be something here.
The status lights on the computer monitors indicate that they’re powered on. I tap a couple of space bars to wake them up, but the only thing that comes on the screen is an official-looking insignia for the base and a password prompt. None of the passcodes Fionna gave me do any good when I enter them in.
I notice a check-in sheet hanging from a clipboard near a hallway that leads to the restrooms. When I flip through the last few weeks, I see that there are apparently regular tests on Sunday nights. Staff started signing in beginning a few minutes after seven for the tests that were scheduled later in the evening.
It’s 6:35 now.
Man, I do not want to be here when the research personnel start showing up.
You have to return the key card by 6:45 anyway. You’ll be good.
At a security console in the back of the room, an array of screens displays security camera footage of the hangar, the outside of the building, the front lobby.
All quiet.
Without having access to the computers, we’re left with scouring the substantial file cabinets that line one of the walls.
“Xav, they have almost as many manila folders as you do in your RV.”
“I told you. They can’t be hacked. Writing stuff down. It’s a good idea.”
“They also can’t be searched in ten minutes.”
“Well, let’s find out.”
He yanks open another file drawer, flips to the Bs, and begins scouring the files for Emilio’s last name while I look under the Rs and then the Ts for any connection with RixoTray or the transdifferentiation research at Fuller Medical Center.
Charlene accepted the rather substantial cardboard box from Clive Fridell.
“I’m planning to catch the show tomorrow night,” he told her.
“I hope you enjoy it.”
“I’m certain I will.”
She was anxious to look through the items but knew she needed to wait until she was alone before paging through the notebooks or sorting through the illusions and effects.
He reached out his hand. “Good night, Miss Antioch. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She set the box on the desk while she shook his hand. “Goodbye, Clive. And thanks again.”
“Of course.”
He led her back down the hallway, and she took the box to her green room where she would have the privacy she needed while she examed Emilio’s things.
Five minutes left.
Still nothing.
I don’t know what might happen if we’re late getting the card back to Fred, and I really don’t want to find out.
“Xav, we need to go.”
“Yeah. I know. You find anything?”
“No.”
“I can’t believe we made it all this way, only to come up short.”
He finishes flipping through one of the manila folders he’d laid open on the file cabinet, then folds it up frustratedly, jams it back in place, and slides the drawer closed.
Four minutes.
I’m leading him through the winding path between the work spaces on the way to the elevator when I see it.
A photo on one of the desks.
And when I realize who it’s a picture of, I stop abruptly. “Wait, Xav. Look.”
I pick up the photo and show it to him.
It’s a picture of Emilio standing next to Tim, the boy with progeria. They’re in front of the Bellagio fountains, and Emilio apparently took the photo himself by holding the camera out in front of him.
Tim has a grip on Emilio’s other hand.
A nameplate on the desk tells us that it’s Project Director Dr. Turnisen’s work space. It’s the only photo on the desk.
So, he knew Emilio.
Is he the one who got him the files?
The RixoTray drive came from Dr. Schatzing. The files on it came from Dr. Turnisen? Is that it? Is that—
When Xavier speaks, it’s almost like he’s reading my mind. “He must be the one who provided Emilio with the access codes to this building.”
“But why?”
He shakes my head. “I don’t know. But I think we might have found what we were looking for. We need to go.”
“Hang on.” I flip out my phone and take a picture of the photograph. A thought comes to me. “Xavier, get some footage of the room.”
“We need to get moving, bro.”
“I know.” There are no bars on my phone, but that’s no surprise considering how far underground we probably are. “Just, quick. Get what you can. Maybe Fionna can analyze some of this stuff if we have images for her to search online with.”
He fishes out his phone, and the two of us set to work getting as much footage as we can in the next minute or two.
I whip open the drawers in Turnisen’s desk and find a number of USB drives with the RixoTray emblem on them and a small notepad that contains sets of alphanumeric sequences correspo
nding to dates. It only takes me a moment to realize all the dates are Sunday nights.
Manila folders can’t be hacked.
And neither can handwritten notes.
The digits and letters under all the dates are in pencil, but tonight’s had been erased before being rewritten in pen. It’s the only entry written in pen.
I photograph the pages, return the notebook to its place, and when I look up to see where Xavier is, I notice movement on the security camera monitor pointed at the front of the building.
Two vehicles have pulled up, and three men and a woman dressed in military fatigues are on their way to the front door.
Tarmac
6:46 p.m.
2 hours left
“Xav!” I exclaim. “We gotta go. Now.” On the screen I see another vehicle trundling up the road toward the building.
We hurry to the elevator.
Hop inside.
As the doors close, I realize something. “The lights in the room were movement activated. Those people are going to find the lights on. They’ll know someone was down here.”
“Maybe no one will notice.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” But that’s a wish, not a prediction.
We reach the ground level. The elevator doors sweep open, and I hear voices and footsteps coming from the hallway that leads to the front lobby.
“Come on,” I whisper urgently. “We need to hide.”
We make it only five or six steps into the hangar before the lights blink on.
We dive down behind the nearest drone and hold our breath.
Across the hangar, the four Air Force personnel emerge from the hallway. They’re laughing and talking about one of their friends and how drunk he was last night.
Heart pounding, I wait for them to pass. From where we’re crouched beside the drone, I can see their legs as they cross the hangar toward the elevator.
As they come our way, we slide incrementally to the side to stay hidden.
They gather around the elevator no more than twenty feet from where Xavier and I are hiding.
There’s no reason for them to think someone might be in here. No reason for them to investigate the hangar.
Still, it’s possible.
All they have to do is look in our direction and—
The elevator doors open, they disappear inside, and then the doors close again.
“Let’s go.” I’m already on my feet. “Out the back, toward the tarmac.”
Xavier and I emerge into the night and sprint across the tarmac toward the maintenance building that hides our truck.
Charlene set the magic effects aside for the time being and focused on Emilio’s notebooks.
As she lifted one of them, a security pass card with an insignia for Groom Lake on it slipped out. The name on the card: Dr. J. Turnisen.
How did he get that?
Well, regardless, it definitely connected Emilio to the base.
She flipped open the notebook that it’d come from.
Emilio’s artistic bent came through in the sketches, doodles, graphs, and notes he’d left behind.
What caught her attention was the last entry, which Emilio had jotted down on the day before leaving for the Philippines. “8:46 Sunday night. The Schatzing grant?”
She stared at the words.
Cryptic, but they tied things back to Dr. Schatzing again.
That’s what he discovered.
Is that why he was killed?
Earlier this morning when Ratchford had met with her and Jevin, he’d asked if they knew anything about a timeline.
So.
She had to do this now. Tonight. Find out whatever she could from Dr. Schatzing.
Jevin wouldn’t want you to do this.
No, but she didn’t have to tell him. She could just head over, get the information she needed, and come back before he returned from Groom Lake.
For the show, she had plenty of alluring outfits here at the Arête that she could choose from. Some were obviously designed only for stage work, but some would work perfectly for passing as a high-end escort.
She could get an audience with Dr. Schatzing tonight, and she could ask him in person what he knew about Emilio and the promise he’d made to Tim at the hospital when he gave the boy his word that he was going to help him not grow old so fast.
Schatzing expected his escorts to arrive at eight, which meant she needed to get there early if she was going to talk with him before the real escort arrived.
Using her phone, she looked up his address online. If she hurried, there should be just enough time to get changed and drive over to Summerlin to his subdivision.
Laying the notebook aside, Charlene went to her wardrobe to find just the right clothes.
“Where were you two?” Fred gasps as we round the corner.
“Long story,” I tell him. The desert is cooler than when we’d entered the building. A scattering of distant stars glance down at us detachedly through the night.
He checks the time. “I need to go. Did you find what you were looking—”
His radio blares to life, asking for all security units near Gate 11 to take their stations. “Possible Roswell.”
“Roswell?” Xavier says.
“It means intruder, someone who’s not supposed to be here.”
“The lights,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Motion sensors in the—never mind.”
“You guys gotta go. Now.”
Xavier and I jump into my truck.
Fred hands Xavier his walkie-talkie. “Take this in case you need it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be alright. Keep an ear on what’s going on. Take it slow, stay on the main roads, keep heading east. Call me when you get home.”
“Can we leave before the shift change?”
“If anyone asks you for a clearance code, tell them you’re in a forty-twenty-two. It means there’s a family emergency and you need to leave. Now, go on, get moving before someone sees us back here.”
He gets into his truck and peels off south. I head east. While I do, Xavier checks his phone and notifies me that there’s a message from Fionna that the USB drive Fred handed over to the blackmailer was accessed and has now subsequently been erased.
“Send her and Charlene the video footage of the research room and the photo of Emilio and Tim that was on Dr. Turnisen’s desk.”
“Gotcha.”
I aim the truck toward the dust-covered access road that leads out of Area 51.
Undersecretary Williamson dropped her car off with one of the Arête’s valet parking attendants and went inside the hotel for her seven o’clock meeting with the person who’d informed her about the undocumented research going on at Plyotech Cybernetics.
Charlene was pulling on a pair of stockings when a text came through from Jevin with an attached photo of Emilio with Tim. There was also some video they’d taken of one of the rooms at the base.
She could watch that later.
For now, she focused on the photo.
It confirmed that Emilio knew Turnisen.
And the words in Emilio’s notebook sure seemed to indicate that he knew Schatzing.
Did Turnisen know Schatzing too?
Her mind buzzed with the connections, the possibilities, the myriad of facts that were somehow related.
The USB drive came from RixoTray, yet it had the Groom Lake access codes on it—codes that allowed someone to get all the way to Turnisen’s research room in Groom Lake.
That, and the security clearance card.
8:46 p.m.
Yes, she needed to do this.
She needed to see Schatzing tonight.
She was wriggling into her dress when her phone rang. This time Agent Ratchford’s number came up.
If nothing else, she was being forced to confront her quirk of not liking talking on the phone.
“Hello, this is Charlene.”
“Miss Antioch, Agent Ratchford. I
feel a little strange asking this, but you told me that two of your associates had been able to open the files from your copy of the USB drive?”
She guessed where this was going. “You’d like the information we offered you earlier today.”
“Yes, well, it seems our people haven’t been able to access the drive as quickly as I thought they would. You mentioned Fionna and Lonnie?”
“They’re here now. At the Arête. I’ll give you Fionna’s cell number.”
After hanging up, she texted Fionna that Ratchford was going to call her and that she would see them later.
Then she finished getting dressed and headed to her car to go visit Dr. Schatzing.
Still in the hotel room, Derek Byrne tried to sort through where Calista could have gone with Dr. Turnisen.
With his injuries, the man wouldn’t have been able to walk out on his own. She wasn’t strong enough to support him.
A wheelchair?
Derek went to the room phone and called the front desk. The woman on the other end referred to him by the alias Calista had rented the room under: “How may I help you, Mr. Brantner?”
“Yes, the wheelchair my wife requested hasn’t arrived yet.”
A moment passed as she typed. “I apologize, sir. It should have been sent up already. I’ll make sure it’s on its way.”
“Thank you.”
“Clive.”
“Oriana.”
“It’s good to see you again.”
“And you as well.” The undersecretary was not the hugging type, so she gave Clive Fridell a brisk handshake instead.
“It was a surprise to hear from you earlier,” Clive said. “I assume you’re in town to check up on what’s happening over at Plyotech?”
“I am. You told me they were doing some unofficial research there regarding bionic technology.”
“That’s what my people have heard.”
Though she was tempted to do so, she didn’t ask who his people were. He was a billionaire many times over, one of the richest people in America. When you have money and power like that, it’s not hard to find out people’s secrets.
He was also on the board at Plyotech. He might have heard about it from someone there. The puzzle might not be any more complicated than that.